Viper Inspired by Naked Woman Symbol of Chrysler Comeback

By Craig Trudell -
Apr 3, 2012

Bobby Cerchione’s motivation for
spending $95,000 four years ago on his second Dodge Viper was
simple. He was worried about how much longer the car and company
that built it, Chrysler LLC, might be around.

“It looked like that might be the end of it,” said
Cerchione, the executive vice president of a trucking company in
Secaucus, New Jersey. “If it was the last chance to own one, I
wanted to have it.”

Cerchione will be among 500 Viper enthusiasts at Skylight
Soho gallery in New York City tomorrow to see the car they call
“the Snake” reemerge from two years of hibernation. The car’s
return, after Chrysler explored a sale of the Viper business
during its tumble into bankruptcy, will show the extent of the
carmaker’s resurgence following its own brush with extinction.

“When this car comes out, it’s really going to scream that
Chrysler’s back,” Dave Sullivan, an analyst at AutoPacific Inc.
in Troy, Michigan, said in a phone interview.

Chrysler’s SRT Viper joins the likes of Honda Motor Co. (7267)’s
NSX and Nissan Motor Co.’s GT-R as “halo” performance cars
that draw buyers who make follow-up purchases of other models in
the company’s lineup. The Auburn Hills, Michigan-based automaker
is betting Viper will help sustain momentum in the U.S., where
sales climbed 26 percent in 2011 and increased by 34 percent in
March, Chrysler’s fifth consecutive monthly gain of more than 30
percent.

Halted in 2010

The draw to the car for some purists, said Chris Marshall,
who has owned three Vipers and lives in Overland Park, Kansas,
is that it lacked “gizmos” like cruise control, offering
drivers a pure connection to the 10-cylinder engine.

“It was just a big bruiser of a motor that made lots of
noise and scared the crap out of Grandma when you took her for a
ride,” he said in a phone interview.

Viper production stopped at the Conner Avenue Assembly
plant in Detroit in July 2010, a year after Chrysler Group LLC
emerged from bankruptcy thanks to a $12.4 billion government
bailout and a rescue by Italian automaker Fiat SpA. (F) The plant,
which Chrysler said in a bankruptcy court filing didn’t get an
offer at its $10 million asking price, was cited by the company
as evidence of the lack of bidders for its assets during the
2009 recession.

The alternative to the government’s rescue was Chrysler’s
failure and messy liquidation, said Van Conway, chief executive
officer of the restructuring firm Conway MacKenzie in
Birmingham, Michigan.

“If the government doesn’t do a bailout, simple math --
Chrysler shuts down,” Conway, who owns two Vipers, said in a
phone interview.

‘They’re Back’

Led by Sergio Marchionne, who is also the chief executive
officer of Turin, Italy-based Fiat, Chrysler shelved the Viper
as it focused efforts on churning out 16 new or refreshed
vehicles in the 19 months following its bankruptcy. Chrysler
expects profit to more than double this year to about $1.5
billion from the $734 million earned in 2011, excluding costs
associated with paying back U.S. and Canadian government loans.

“Chrysler building the Viper again is their way of saying
‘We’ve got enough extra bandwidth that now that we’re going to
bring out the cool stuff,’” said Janni Cone, who along with her
husband, Henry, have owned four Vipers since 1997. “They’re not
worrying about surviving anymore or dressing in gray and take
their licks because of the bankruptcy. They’re back.”

The Cones, who live in Raleigh, North Carolina, are members
of Viper Club of America. Chrysler started the group in 1995,
three years after the company’s then-President Robert Lutz led
the car into its first year of production. The club has
interacted with celebrity owners including Tonight Show host Jay Leno and wrestler Hulk Hogan.

Prototype Peek

Chrysler offered an early peek at a prototype of the new
Viper to club members last year at its annual invitational in
Salt Lake City. The company encouraged fans to weigh in on
naming Viper’s new snake-face logo, try out different seats and
select from a palette of color choices.

“Let’s just say sexy is back,” Cerchione, who attended
the invitational, said of the Viper’s new look. “It’s elegant
and mean-looking at the same time. It’s got the curves in all
the right spots.”

Ralph Gilles, Chrysler Group’s head of design and president
of the company’s SRT performance brand, told reporters last year
in Detroit that the new Viper’s look was “drop-dead beautiful”
and inspired by “a naked woman on the beach.” He said Viper
won’t use engines from Fiat’s Ferrari brand. The Italian
automaker also owns Maserati.

Viper probably will remain the most expensive model in
Chrysler’s lineup. The previous model sold for starting prices
of more than $90,000. Viper’s reputation still was “a little
bit blue-collar” for a halo car, Janni Cone said, in part
because of its bare-bones interior.

‘Bring in Bankers’

Sullivan, the product analyst at AutoPacific, said he
expects dramatic changes to the Viper’s interior. The car may
add features such as navigation and timers for owners who race
their Viper on the track.

With Viper’s sleek design and upgrades inside the cabin,
the car will bring in “a whole new group of buyers,” Cerchione
said.

“It will bring in those bankers now,” he said.

Chrysler has shared few details about Viper ahead of its
unveiling to reporters tomorrow at the New York auto show. Viper
Club of America members said they expect the car will continue
to offer the 10-cylinder engine, which in the last model
achieved more than 600 horsepower and could accelerate to 60 mph
(80 kmph) in less than 4 seconds.

Dozen a Day

“If it wasn’t a V-10, it wouldn’t be a Viper,” said
Randall Arnold, a furniture salesman in Dayton, Ohio, who owns a
1993 Viper. “That’s what it was born with and that’s what I’m
sure it will stay with.”

Chrysler sold 392 Vipers in 2010, the last year it was in
production, according to Autodata Corp., a researcher in
Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey. Employees at the Conner Avenue plant
made about 22,070 Vipers in the 15 years before shutting in
2010, or about a dozen cars a day, according to the company.

The Viper will continue to be a small-production model,
with researcher IHS Automotive estimating 2013 production of
less than 2,000 units. Still, the reopening of the Detroit
factory will restore about 150 jobs, part of the more than 9,400
the company has said it has added since June 2009.

“That’s just another momentum builder where somebody else
has confidence in the city of Detroit to make that kind of
investment,” Dave Bing, the city’s mayor, said in a March 21
interview.

Halo Car

More important to Chrysler than the number of Vipers sold
will be its status as a halo car. Alex Ristanovic, of Algonquin,
Illinois, said he never owned a Chrysler product until he bought
his first Viper in 1994. He has owned more than a dozen since,
and has bought several Dodge minivans for his IT consulting
business.

“Just like with Mac and Apple, with Coca-Cola, when you’ve
built a fan base, it’s almost one of the most important things
you can do if you can pull it off,” he said. “Chrysler’s done
that with the Viper. Viper has a fan base that goes beyond just
liking the car.”